Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu
Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu is the third novel in the Monk mystery book series by Lee Goldberg. Plot The story opens with Adrian Monk and Natalie Teeger at McKinley Park, assisting Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher on a homicide. A young female jogger has been found strangled to death, with her left shoe taken. With her body being in the dog park, Monk borrows a set of binoculars from Kent Milner, a fellow patrol officer, and quickly makes several deductions that might help in identifying the victim. This is just the third victim of an as-yet unnamed serial killer - two other women have been killed in identical fashion over the past month. After Monk examines the crime scene, Stottlemeyer pulls Monk and Natalie aside and warns them to expect some major shakeups in light of an impending "blue flu." Contract negotiations between the police union and the mayor's office have just collapsed. With it being against the law for police officers to go on strike, they do the next best thing: they call in sick en masse. Because of this, it may be some time before Monk has another case. The next day, Monk and Natalie go shopping for Julie's back-to-school wardrobe, and Monk unwittingly helps store security bust a shoplifting ring. While they are shopping, the mayor, Barry Smitrovitch, appears on a TV and announces that a $250,000 reward will be issued to people whose information leads to the arrest of the serial killer, who has now been identified as the "Golden Gate Strangler". The day after that, Monk and Natalie are summoned by the Mayor to City Hall, where he presents them with an audacious proposal: he wants to temporarily deputize Monk, and make him acting captain of the homicide division. It is not to fulfill Monk's wish of getting his badge back, but to further progress on the Golden Gate Strangler investigation. Natalie is against Monk being put back on the force, as she suspects that the Mayor wants to use Monk as a power play, so he won't have to give in to the police union's demands; if he accepts, Monk will be despised by the rank and file, from Stottlemeyer on down, as a "scab." But it's a losing argument, since Natalie knows all too well that there are two things Monk would walk barefoot through Hell to get: the solution to Trudy's murder, and his badge. Monk accepts, and takes over the Robbery-Homicide division with Natalie, a skeleton crew of patrol officers, and a squad of three detectives to command, who like Monk were similarly suspended or retired for mental health reasons. Reviewing their files, Natalie observes that each of these new detectives has a mental health problem that makes Monk seem almost normal: *Jack Wyatt, a.k.a. "Mad Jack": His problem is serious anger control issues, and was terminated after the department lost several police brutality cases filed against him. He has a hair-trigger temper and a habit of responding to any situation, from the life-threatening to the merely annoying, with swift and blinding violence. He is assisted by his anger management counselor, Arnie, who Wyatt has shot on several occasions. *Cynthia "Cindy" Chow is a paranoid schizophrenic, who spent the long first phase of her career on undercover assignments, the details of which are still confidential (much of her file is blacked out). After a lifetime of looking over her shoulder (literally and figuratively) she has become a jumpy conspiracy theorist; she believes, among other things, that the government is watching her with hidden cameras in her computer monitor, and that aliens are out to abduct and impregnate her. She is assisted by her psychiatric nurse, Jasper Perry, who helps keep her paranoia under control and views her as a fertile source for his doctoral thesis. *Frank Porter, arguably the most normal of Monk's new skeletal squad, is a veteran ex-detective with twenty years of experience working and cracking homicide cases (some of his skills are as good as Monk's). He is now well into his eighties and was forced to retire with the onset of senility. He is often unable to remember his own name, or where he was the day before (in fact, once when sitting on a crate at a crime scene, he thinks he is the killer, and he also forgets Natalie's name). Helping him out is his bored but dutiful granddaughter, Sparrow Porter. Monk and Natalie's first day is busy. They have barely gotten settled in when they get called in to investigate the death of Allegra Doucett, an astrologer found stabbed to death in her house. Monk and Natalie drive over to the crime scene and are debriefed by Cindy Chow, who has been given this case as the primary detective. Not much is known so far, but it is believed Allegra was stabbed multiple times with an icepick. Analyzing the scene for himself, Monk notices a few clues of interest: one is that the towel rack in the bathroom is broken, like someone was in there at the time of the murder. Another is the lack of forced entry and defensive wounds on the victim, suggesting that she knew her killer. Looking for answers, Monk and Natalie quickly home in on a person of interest, a rival astrologer named Madam Frost who lives across the street from the crime scene. Frost does not have any kind words for her neighbor, calling her a fraud and openly admitting that Allegra had taken many of her clients from her, giving her a possible motive for the crime. Before Monk and Natalie can start digging, they are called off to the scene of a hit-and-run. Unfortunately for them, Natalie's car has been towed on orders from another cop while they were inside the crime scene. Natalie angrily confronts the patrol officer who gave the okay for her car to be towed and she quickly demands the officer's car keys, and they drive the patrol car to the second crime scene. When Monk and Natalie arrive at the new crime scene, most of the onlookers they see are being attracted to a building fire just around the corner, stemming from a car that crashed through a storefront. The cause of this incident is Mad Jack Wyatt, who shot out the tires of the car in question because the driver was a suspect in some recent muggings. Focusing back on the death in front of them, Jack debriefs Monk and Natalie on this victim. This victim is an architect named John Yamada, who was struck by a car while crossing the street. The witnesses have been unable to agree as to the make and model of the car. Monk quickly notices that this was probably an intentional act: the pattern of the death car's skid marks shows that the driver double parked and waited for Yamada to cross the street before the driver floored on the gas pedal. Not only that, but the witnesses' inability to agree on the vehicle description, plus the discovery of traces of mud on the pavement, suggest that the driver had covered the plates with mud to make the car harder to identify. Monk and Natalie don't have much time to start looking into this crime scene either before they are forced to drive off to a third homicide on Russian Hill, this one overseen by Frank Porter. In this one, a waitress named Diane Truby was jumped while walking past an alleyway by someone who threw her into the path of a bus that she had just gotten off. Looking at the crime scene, Monk finds something unusual: the killer bought a vegetable crate from a nearby grocery store to sit on while waiting for their victim to show up. Why would they need to sit when they could easily stand or lean against the while while hiding? The fact that the killer bought the crate to begin with also suggests that their choice of victim was deliberate. Over dinner, Julie is pleased with most of the clothes Natalie bought her, but is furious at one or two out-of-style items included in the mix. During their argument, Monk has an epiphany, and asks Julie to come to the station with them (Julie has a ball riding in the car, getting handcuffed and pretending she's a psychopath on her way to get the third degree). At the station, Julie examines photos of the running shoes the Golden Gate Strangler's victims were wearing and confirms Monk's theory: their shoes are all in brand-new condition, but they are outdated styles, suggesting that they were bought secondhand and from less-than-legal vendors. Since that is something all the victims have in common, Monk directs Porter to start compiling a list of itinerant shoe vendors, in the hopes that that might identify a suspect. Monk and Natalie are then forced to temporarily leave Julie behind at the station while they respond to a robbery at a convenience store at which a cashier has been shot dead. Monk determines that the dead cashier's coworker shot him, and then staged a robbery to pocket money from the till. The next morning, when trying to delegate casework to his new squad, Monk soon realizes that he can't afford to investigate every case himself, like he usually does. He calls on Stottlemeyer, who meets Monk and Natalie in secret and gives Monk some helpful pointers on being a team leader. The most important of which is to match each case to the talents of his subordinates. He also encourages Monk to realize that each of his detectives, like Monk, have their own "gifts" to go with their "curses": for example, Porter is one of the most thorough investigators the department ever had, and when his senility isn't in the way, he has a nearly flawless memory when it comes to the facts of a case (a flawless memory that can rival that of Monk's at times); Chow has a gift at connecting the threads between seemingly unrelated persons, places, or events that tie a complicated case together (in other words, she sees conspiracies everywhere, and often spots a real one); and Wyatt is a fearless, dogged determinator who doesn't let anything get in the way of closing a case. With that in mind, Monk decides to stick to the Allegra Doucett homicide while leaving the other three detectives to handle the other homicide cases. He and Natalie track down Max Collins, a client of Allegra Doucett's who lost a lot of money due to her practices. He admits to having been in the neighborhood when she was killed, and admits that he had a private investigator do some digging on Allegra. This investigation is cut short when Monk and Natalie are called to another homicide. Along the way, Natalie gets pulled over for a speeding offense, but is unable to talk the officer out of writing her a ticket. This crime scene is that of a man named Scott Eggers. Monk quickly reconstructs the crime scene and surmises what happened: Eggers was jumped by someone who struck him from behind while he was walking to his car, and his killer then pinned him down with one knee and suffocated him with a plastic grocery bag from a nearby garbage can. This murder baffles Monk: none of the potential persons of interest named by Eggers' gay lover don't seem to have motives strong enough to commit murder. Furthermore, for a premeditated murder, too much of the actual deed seems improvised. If this was meant to be a robbery, why didn't the killer take his car or any of the money in his wallet? And why did the killer go through the trouble of suffocating him when he was already defenseless? And if this was meant to be premeditated, why would the killer suffocate the victim using a plastic bag that was lying nearby after ''their victim was out cold, instead of bringing one with him? While analyzing the crime scene, Monk and Natalie have a run in with Kent Milner, the patrol cop from the Strangler's last victim who loaned Monk some binoculars. They're surprised to find him working outside his normal beat in Portrero Hill, which he confides is a downside to the strike, not that he minds as he's financially strapped. Milner is envious of the $250,000 reward the mayor has put out, and the fact that no one has yet tried to claim the reward, seemingly wishing he could claim a share of that money. Three days after the last Strangler victim was found, a lead comes in when a man named Bertram Gruber enters the police station and announces that he can identify the killer. He describes seeing the attacker leaving the scene, and getting into a certain model of car. He even got a partial license plate number. This allows the police to identify an itinerant shoe vendor named Charlie Herrin – which can't be a coincidence. Monk and Wyatt organize a SWAT team and raid Herrin's apartment later that day. After a brief moment where Herrin momentarily holds Monk hostage with a pistol to his head, Wyatt is able to disarm him and take him into custody. Evidence found at the apartment link him back to the Strangler killings. However, Monk is suspicious of Gruber: in his statement, he said Herrin was carrying a left shoe as he got into his car. He also said he saw Herrin leaving the dog park. These are two details that the police haven't released to the media. At a press conference, Gruber receives the reward, and a pat on the back from the Mayor. Monk is also asked to give a speech, but falls apart when he sees the microphone at the podium is askew. The Mayor is not happy with Monk, even as tensions rise between Monk and the absent officers; with Monk on a roll, it looks like the Flu will not be ending anytime soon. But Monk is still torn up about his failure to solve the other homicides; unrelated though they may appear, Monk insists that they must be connected somehow; three of the M.O.'s are curiously improvisational, yet not so – i.e., the killer appears to be selecting his victims with care, yet killing them by whatever means happen to be at hand. When Porter mentions, in an apparent non sequiter, that three of the victims are all 44 years old – and in fact, were born on the same day – Monk realizes that in fact, they were all probably the victim of a second serial killer. Here's What Happened(I) Allegra Doucet had a morning appointment with one of her clients, and began drawing up a star chart for him. The client excused himself to use the bathroom, which was when the killer entered and murdered Allegra. The client witnessed the murder, and scrambled out through the bathroom window. The killer didn't see who the client was, but extrapolated certain details from the unfinished star chart – his birthdate, and the fact that he was born in, and still lives in, San Francisco. Now, the killer has been going around town, trying to eliminate the witness. While Monk is delivering the summation at Allegra's house, another homicide is reported, and this time it's someone they know: Officer Milner, found shot dead next to his police cruiser in an abandoned warehouse. When Monk and Natalie race over to the crime scene, they find Stottlemeyer and Disher, and many of the other striking detectives have also shown up at the scene, having come back on duty to catch the killer. Even so, Monk is still an acting captain, responsible for solving his new serial killer. Stottlemeyer's theory is that Milner was meeting off-books with a snitch who set him up to be killed, as he never got a chance to so much as unsnap his holster to draw his gun, nor did he inform the dispatcher where he was going. Monk is skeptical, as Milner had only been on the force for about a year and has never come off as the kind of cop who would be meeting with informants. Searching Milner's cruiser, on the other hand, Monk starts to paint a not so innocent picture of Milner: he kept a magazine in the cruiser for reading, in which he'd marked down the corners of some pages containing home listings and cars he could not possibly afford on his salary. For a cop at the lowest pay grade on the force and who was risking burning bridges with his colleagues by working overtime during a strike, Milner seemed to think he was about to score a major windfall. Back at the homicide squad room, Monk and Natalie reconvene with their unit, who've been relegated to a corner of the room with the striking detectives coming back to work. While they've been out, Sparrow and Chow have been doing some analysis of the astrological chart that was on Allegra Doucett's computer when she was killed, and have deciphered it. Listening to their breakdown of the chart, Natalie realizes that the killer is an astrologer, as that would be the only way the killer could so easily identify the three people they thought were the potential witness. One such person immediately comes to Monk's mind: Madam Frost, Allegra's rival. Monk and Natalie drive back over to Madam Frost's place, where they find Frost in a meeting with Max Collins, and gives his summation. Allegra was a hack astrologer, who was stealing Madam Frost's clients and costing her lost revenue. Unable to compete with her younger rival, Frost chose to kill her instead. She went over to her house on a friendly pretense, and stabbed her to death, explaining the lack of a struggled. While composing herself, Madam Frost heard the toilet flush, and realized that her client was in the bathroom and had seen the whole thing. By the time she got there, the witness had fled out the bathroom window. Unable to chase the witness back to his or her car, she borrowed the astrological chart Allegra had composited on her computer and used that to make up a profile of the witness. Using this profile, she accessed public databases to obtain information on people who fit the profile, settling on the three people who have been killed already. She was in such a hurry to kill the witness before the witness went to the police that she had to improvise all three murders, and rather hastily. In fact, in identifying her as the suspect, Monk points out that evidence at all three crime scenes points to someone with Madam Frost's profile. Starting with the Yamada hit-and-run. Monk recalls that she was walking up to her house when he and Natalie questioned her, as the police had shown up to investigate Allegra's death and had blocked off the street with crime scene tape, meaning she'd had to temporarily park the car she'd just used to kill Yamada elsewhere. As for the Diane Truby murder, it explains what Porter had posited at that crime scene about the killer having sore feet and/or back problems: Frost had stolen the empty vegetable crate to sit on while waiting for her victim to show up. And with the Scott Eggers homicide, it was the same story: Frost knocked him out with her cane, then used a nearby garbage bag to suffocate him. While Collins offers to line Madam Frost up with an attorney, Frost, realizing she's caught, confesses, and is arrested. As they load her into the squad car to be taken away for booking, Natalie asks one last nagging question: why did Madam Frost continue killing after the Yamada and Truby homicides when no one came forward after either of them? Her explanation was that "the stars" told her she was going to get caught. Elsewhere, a search led by Wyatt turns up the witness, who admits to seeing Frost murder Allegra. However, he never came forward because he feared that an illegal movie bootlegging operation he was running at his house would have been discovered. The next day, when Monk goes in for his session with Dr. Kroger, Dr. Kroger pulls Natalie aside to privately confide some concern for Monk's wellbeing in light of taking the Mayor's offer. He isn't exactly pleased that Monk got put back on the force without getting his input. In fact, the same is true of Porter, Chow and Wyatt: they were also patients initially referred to Dr. Kroger by the department after their dismissals, and they would never have been put back on the force under normal circumstances without his approval and the approval of the review board. Natalie tries to stay optimistic, claiming that Monk's detectives have proven themselves worthy, but Dr. Kroger cautiously warns that what's fair doesn't necessarily always work with office politics, and Monk and his detectives are likely going to be left in the dust, especially since Milner's murder has given reason for the police union and City Hall to resume negotiations. With his serial killer caught, Monk turns his attention to the Milner homicide. Stottlemeyer and Disher are at a loss for leads as to who would set Milner up to be killed: he only had been on the force for a year, not enough time for him to have made any serious enemies, or to have been on the trail of anything dangerous. The only people he's ever arrested have all been for routine traffic violations and small offenses that warranted an overnight stay in a holding cell and then a desk appearance ticket. But looking through Milner's employment file, Monk notices one name of interest: eight months ago, Milner arrested Bertram Gruber for a minor drug offense at McKinley Park, where Herrin killed his last victim. And with that, Monk develops a theory. Here's What Happened(II) Somehow, Milner identified Charlie Herrin as the Golden Gate Strangler. His duty was to arrest Herrin, and he would have earned him promotion and the glory of bringing down a serial killer singlehandedly, but as a city servant, he was ineligible to collect the reward. Because he had a wife and two children to support, instead he recruited Gruber to finger Herrin and split the reward – only Gruber got greedy, and killed Milner to keep it all for himself. To test their theory, Monk and Natalie interview Charlie Herrin in jail. When they show him a picture of Milner (after Natalie hands over her shoes to Herrin for him to add to his collection), he recognizes the late officer. As he explains, he nearly got caught twice over the weekend before he was "identified" by Gruber at the station. The first was that Saturday, when he took his eyes off the road because he was too busy sniffing his new shoe from his latest victim and ran a red light, colliding with a pickup truck. They didn't file any police report as the other driver was an illegal Hispanic and didn't want to get in trouble with the authorities, so they both went on their way. But the next day, Sunday, Herrin got pulled over by Milner for speeding. After taking Herrin's license number down, he went back to his car...and then just stared at Herrin for a very long time, seemingly contemplating his options. Then he let Herrin go with a warning rather than write him a ticket or even arrest him– not, as Monk and Natalie sadly realize, because he didn't recognize the clue, but because he decided that he'd go for the immediate opportunity to cash in on the reward money using Gruber as a front man, rather than the long-term benefits he'd have gotten if he'd just arrested Herrin (including the potential to be promoted to a higher rank and pay grade). Going back into Officer Milner's possessions including the ones he had on him when he died, they find his ticket book, which backs up Herrin's story: Milner did indeed fill out an entry in his book for the traffic stop, though he never completed it nor did he submit it when he got back from patrol at the end of his shift, as its discovery would've been an embarrassment to himself and the department plus would have exposed his scheme. But with proof that Milner, not Gruber, was the real tipster, and Herrin's statement showing that he hadn't damaged his car yet at the time that Gruber claimed to have seen him, they have enough to arrest him. Monk, Natalie, and Stottlemeyer confront Gruber at the marina, where he is shopping for a new motor yacht. Gruber panics, pulls a pistol from his pocket, and grabs Monk as a hostage. Monk, who is already seasick from just standing on the pier, and who hates having just been held hostage for the second time on the job, begs to be shot. Then he throws up, which distracts Gruber long enough for Stottlemeyer to disable him with a shot to the shoulder. The pistol is identified to have been the one that was used to shoot Milner. The day is saved, but the mayor is enraged to learn that the man he so publicly congratulated and rewarded has been exposed by Monk as a fraud and a cop-killer. The police union takes advantage of the Mayor's humiliation, and get him to cave to their demands in exchange for covering up the incident by reporting to the papers that they knew Gruber was guilty from the beginning and were working with the mayor as part of a sting operation. As the Blue Flu ends, Stottlemeyer regrets to tell Monk that both his promotion and his reinstatement have been yanked. Monk is heartbroken and silent, but Natalie is furious and vocal: Monk solved every case, saved lives, and effectively got the police the deal they wanted, but those means nothing to both the mayor's office and the department. Stottlemeyer says that she and Monk still crossed a line by "scabbing," and the department can't forgive that. Monk's team is likewise out, but they take it better than their Captain: in fact, they are forming their own detective agency, and make sure to tell Monk that they are honored to have served under him – even Jack Wyatt, who unexpectedly provides a sage piece of comfort to Monk: getting reinstated would have meant a drastic change, and Monk hates change. Monk brightens immediately. Natalie asks her three fellow assistants to keep in touch. Background Information and Notes *The three assistants reappear briefly in the opening chapter of ''Mr. Monk Goes to Germany, where it is revealed that they and Natalie have kept in touch, and meet for coffee about once a month to swap stories and sympathies. They have also opened the group to other assistants, including Burton "Gus" Gustor of Psych. *Elements of the Golden Gate Strangler and Officer Milner subplot were adapted into the episode "Mr. Monk and the Badge," in a manner similar to that in which elements from "Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse" were adapted into the episode "Mr. Monk Can't See a Thing." In a way, Jack Wyatt's prediction comes true, since, at the end of "Mr. Monk and the Badge," Monk decides that being reinstated is too big a change for him. **Many of the characters in Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu reappeared in "Mr. Monk and the Badge," with different names: Bertrum Gruber becames a window washer named Mikhail Almonov, and Officer Kent Milner becomes Officer Russell DiMarco, and the connection between the two is that they used to play on the same softball team in high school. The Golden Gate Strangler becomes known as the Pickaxe Killer. *In Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop, the events of this novel are alluded back to when Stottlemeyer, having just terminated Monk's consulting contract, reminds Natalie about the time when she and Monk were scabbing behind his desk. *The way the Yamada murder works is very similar to an attempt on Randy's life in "Mr. Monk Goes to a Wedding," as both involve a driver idling for a while and waiting for their victim to come by before flooring it. *Detective Mad Jack Wyatt seems to based on Dirty Harry. *Had Officer Milner chosen to arrest Charlie Herrin rather than go for the reward money, Herrin would join a list of other infamous serial killers or criminals who were caught through a traffic violation, like Ted Bundy and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Goofs * In real life, it would be very unlikely that Monk or any of the discharged detectives on his squad would get deputized for the length of a police strike, no matter how depleted the SFPD's ranks were. More than likely, the city of San Francisco would borrow officers from the California Highway Patrol, the Oakland Police Department, the San Jose Police Department, or any other police force in the Bay Area. * Natalie burns off the speeding ticket she gets for driving 27 MPH in a 25 MPH zone by attending traffic school. However, she could have easily have had her ticket dismissed in other ways - such as contesting the infraction in traffic court, or filing a complaint against the ticketing officer. * Generally, police are supposed to pull over anyone who drives even a mile over the speed limit, yet they normally will let people driving no less than 5 MPH over the limit off easily. In the scene where Natalie is pulled over and ticketed, she would have fallen under this general rule. * When they go to the prison, it's implied that Natalie is searched by a male guard. Natalie is a woman, so in real life, this would never happen. She would have been searched by an officer of the same gender. * The officers in the raid on Herrin's apartment break procedure in one key spot: Herrin has Monk at gunpoint and is threatening to shoot him unless the cops lower their weapons. The cops do so. In real life, cops are trained to never take their gun off a hostage taker. This is in part because in real life, usually the hostage taker, barring the occasional ones who are willing to give their life, doesn't want to shoot the hostage much more than the heroes do. If they were to kill the hostage because the heroes refused to put down their weapons, there is suddenly nothing to keep the heroes from using said weapons on them, or they will end up with a dead hostage and a dead hero. Category:Literature